The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Minnelli, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 2pm
This rarely screened Vincente Minnelli film is part of the 'You Must Remember This presents: The Old Man is Still Alive' season at BFI Southbank. Many great directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1930 to ’50s, radically changed course in the later years of their career – a theme that runs through the new season of the podcast You Must Remember This and this BFI season. The men behind undeniable classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, My Fair Lady, Sunset Boulevard, Gigi and Psycho, attempted – or were forced – to engage with massive changes in technology; shifts in attitudes towards race and gender, and a new generation of studio executives and audiences who could be sceptical that an ‘old man’ had anything to offer in a world obsessed with burning down the past and starting fresh. Some railed against the new ‘degenerate’ cinema made by, in Billy Wilder’s phrase, ‘the kids with beards’ and tried to preserve the status quo; others attempted to make films that confronted the generation gap and a transformed society.
Tonight’s film (on 35mm) will be introduced by season curator Karina Longworth.
Full details of the season can be found here.
Chicago Reader review:
Considering how stupid the whole idea was—to remake a Rudolph Valentino
silent with Glenn Ford—this 1962 feature picture is surprisingly
passable, particularly when you turn off the sound track and concentrate
on the sumptuous visuals provided by Vincente Minnelli. It’s no
classic, but there’s more integrity here than anyone would have a right
to expect. With Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer, Lee J. Cobb, and the two
horsemen of 40s melodrama, Paul Henreid and Paul Lukas.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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